A federal MP claims Australia's political donations system is little better than the sleazy cash-in-brown-paper-bag operations that occur in corrupt developing nations.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie lashed out the major parties and some of his crossbench colleagues for accepting "grubby money" from the gambling industry, which successfully rolled back his attempts to curb poker machine use in Australia.

He said large donations the gambling industry made to the political parties and to the Liberal MP and then opposition spokesman Kevin Andrews were made as investments in return, whether that be an immediate or eventual policy decision favourable to their vested interest.

He said the proof was in the fact that the modest reforms to curb poker machines made by the Gillard minority government were "quickly overturned" by the Coalition government with the support of Labor in the Senate.

"We in Australia rail at wads of cash in brown paper bags in other countries but our political donations system is little better," Mr Wilkie said.

Mr Andrews says any suggestion his policies can be bought or influenced are "wrong and offensive." Fairfax Media does not suggest the donations directly influenced Mr Andrews' decision making.<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><!--[endif]-->But Mr Wilkie said the donation exposed a clear conflict of interest.

Andrew WilkieCredit:Alex Ellinghausen

"It's one thing to hand money over to a political party but to effectively hand it to the Shadow Minister … through another entity … frankly it makes this no better than large sums of money changing hands in a brown paper bag in a developing country," he said.

Mr Wilkie said donations should be declared immediately and the disclosure threshold of $13,000 lowered.

The Labor Party also supports real-time declarations and voluntarily discloses all donations made to it above $1000.